Abstract:

In the area of Second Language Acquisition it is assumed that morphophonological features belonging to the mother tongue are easily recoverable in the process of acquiring a second language or at least less problematic than those features that do not exist in the L1 (Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou ,2007). Evidence of these are the so called morpheme order studies done by Dulay and Burt in the 70´s (Dulay and Burt ,1973). More recent, the Full Transfer/Full Access hypothesis do assume that L2 learners transfer, in total or partial, the features available in the L1 into the L2 (Schwartz and Sprouse ,1996). Assuming that the ED past tense morpheme will not be problematic for any people who is a native speaker Spanish due to the rich morphology of the inflectional tense in Spanish (preterite), an investigation of the acquisition of the past tense ED morpheme production by L1 Spanish speakers who are attending a BA in classroom settings at the Universidad Autonoma del Carmen was proposed. The aim of this research was to analyze to what extent do Spanish speakers recognize the correct ED (/t/ , /id/ , /d/) morpheme pronunciation and, also, to analyze if they do produce, orally, the right morpheme. By means of an Acceptability Judgement Task (AJT) and an Oral Production Task (OPT) that were administered to 25 native Spanish speakers who were divided into three proficiency levels (n=7 elementary level, n=14 intermediate level, and n=4 advanced level) data was collected. There were two main variables to analyze, the independent variable which was divided in three groups according to a placement test results and the rate of production and selection of the right ED pronunciation by all groups. Using power point slides participants were asked to select the right ED morpheme pronunciation from a three-choices set /t/, /id/, /d/ from the first experiment, and in the second experiment two pictures were presented to each participant in order to produce, orally, the intuitions that they believe belong to the right ED ending. Those intuitions were audio recorded and then analyzed. Using descriptive statistics the results of the first experiment do show that Spanish speakers transfer properties of their L1 when selecting the ED morpheme in past tense being the /d/ at 62% and /id/ at 52% the most selected by the three groups, and rejecting the /t/ ending selecting it at only 22%. Similar results do show in the production task, the second experiment, where the /id/ morpheme was produced at 81% and the /d/ morpheme at 62% and being the less produced the /t/ at only 55%. Those results are discussed within the theories of second language acquisition and being the best that fit with the results the Missing Surface Inflectional Hypothesis (MSIH) proposed by Prevost and White (2000) and Haznedar (2003). Those results are relevant to implement strategies in the English classrooms in order to make students clear that in L2 English the ED morpheme has got the same morphological representation in the surface structure (syntax) but different phonological representations in the spell out.

Keywords:

morpheme, learning, thematic verbs, inflection.